Brouhaha in Brooklyn: The Trail Of The Missing Corpses (Gotham Chronicles Book 2)

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I can hardly believe this is my last Week in Review for Where has this year gone? I have read so many good books this year and a few not so good ones. So what did I read this week?

Posted by Melanie Sanderson at 6: And the funny thing? But it took a long time to get here. Growing up, I always heard about mountaintop experiences. Right now, with a book coming out, interviews being done, signings being scheduled, etc. Mitchell and looking east as the sun rises through the fog on a crisp September morning. This does not change the fact that I hiked for hours to get to this point, froze my butt off through the rainy night, and wore a blister on my left heel. Time to hike again. To all the writers out there. The pack can get heavy, your feet sore, your back tired.

If you have a story to tell, tell it. So, to all you aspiring writers out there: And most importantly, keep writing! Posted by Qwill at 2: Since you've all been very good readers in we have one more big giveaway for you. These are lovely books and items that we picked up mostly at New York Comic Con. The literary 'track' at NYCC features books for all ages so if you are a teenager or middle schooler you'll find books, comics, and much more that will appeal to you. Make sure to pay attention to the schedule so you know who is where when. Better - prepare ahead of time.

Publishers generally post schedules of signings and have printed information about their signing schedule for the Con. Wander around and you'll find books available for sale or for free. Many of the sale books have been signed by the authors. The lines can be long sometimes but are well handled. I've found that The authors are extremely nice. I really can't emphasize how much fun it is to meet a favorite author!

But you already know that. But every day at NYCC is fun for all ages of fans! On to the giveaway: Posted by Qwill at 8: Posted by Qwill at Roy , Michael J. Brannigan's Top Three Books of Sullivan , The Lascar's Dagger. Welcome to The Qwillery. You've written for film, TV and radio and more. How does all that influence or not your novel writing? Thank you very much for the invitation, Sally. Are you a plotter or a pantser? I do a lot of scriptwriting and a lot of good scriptwriting is about structure. However, when it comes to book writing, part of the joy is the freedom to be led by your characters, so I enjoy the pantsing side there enormously.

I guess I always know where I am going though, which would make me a pretty pantsy plotter. What is the most challenging thing for you about writing?

Stopping is very tricky. I usually take the bruised fingertips and the bleeding eyes as a hint; otherwise I might overdo it. Actually I can write anywhere, trains, buses, you name it. However, my writing is appalling and my typing is poor too. I would never have got anywhere without the Word Processor. Let us praise the Word Processor and the Toshiba Libretto. Before Netbooks this little gem ran Word and was the size of large paperback book. I wrote just about everywhere on my Libretto, especially the N Who are some of your literary influences?

Hmm, my favourite things, eh? I feel a song coming on! Tolkien meets Chandler in a seedy underworld bar run by a defrocked Wizard. Tell us something about Detective Strongoak that is not in the book description. What inspired you to write Detective Strongoak? I was broke in Hamburg without a return ticket. It focuses the mind somewhat. Not as exciting or intriguing as it sounds. What sort of research did you do for Detective Strongoak? I read non-stop from the age of five — often when walking.

Not recommended so much if you live in a big city, but anywhere with decent pavements, and not much traffic. In Detective Strongoak who was the easiest character to write and why? Morris Dickstein, professor of English and theater at CUNY Graduate Center in New York and author previously of Gates of Eden and Leopards in the Temple has fashioned a remarkable narrative of the times that is a model of interdisciplinary technique, and a true joy to read. The official publication date for this big book is Nov. Drawing generously on the wealth of archival materials that have become available in recent years, he is able to offer fresh insights that do not rely entirely on the published works of others.

Just as important, he writes in a lively, accessible style that never loses sight of the continuing drama. A massive, admirable effort. This work covers the years between and B. He is a teacher, to be sure, but he is also a scholar, a historian, and a true craftsman, and his eagerness to share his knowledge is an inspiration. His book, Japanese Papermaking: Traditions, and Techniques, draws on research conducted in the field in the s, and remains a classic in its field. I have had the great good pleasure to interview Tim several times for my work-in-progress, a cultural history of paper to be published in by Alfred A.

Knopf; he was the person, in fact, who sparked my interest in the topic in the first place during a speaking visit I made in to Iowa City. You can be sure there will be profiles of both in my book. Last year, Tim put me in touch with Paul Denhoed, a colleague of his living and working in Japan, who coordinated a trip I made there to meet with a variety of interesting people, including Richard Flavin, an American expatriate, papermaker, and artist who has lived in Japan for more than thirty years, and Ichibei Iwano, a ninth-generation papermaker based in Echizen northwest of Tokyo, and recognized by his country as a Living National Treasure.

I mention the latter in particular because Tim, in his way, enjoys a similar stature here in the United States. A little bit of something for everyone with this quartet--solid nonfiction, a scholarly biography, a charming novel, a new selection of poetry from the work of a grand master. Strength in What Remains: Tracy Kidder has to be ranked among the best writers of literary nonfiction out there, one of the few authors who you can pretty much say, time after time, is not going to disappoint you with his latest effort.

Liberty Newspost July-28-10

No surprise, then, to report that this, his eighth book, may well be his best--which is saying quite a bit, when you consider that his earlier efforts have included The Soul of New Machine, Mountains Beyond Mountains, Home Town, and Old Friends, and that his honors include the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and Robert F.

Two years later, he enrolls in Columbia University without so much as a green card to his name, his story not only one of survival and hope, but one of tenacity, decency and good will that will lead him on to medical school and a life filled with purpose. As historical figures go, I can think of no other individual who has achieved the kind of iconic stature accorded in death to Joan of Arc , the peasant girl from Domremy variously cast as saint, sorcerer, soldier, lunatic, witch, gifted leader, and martyr in the seven centuries that have elapsed since her execution by the English, and her subsequent passage into sainthood.

Just as interesting is the informed look Taylor offers into medieval life.

Calaméo - Liberty Newspost July

What impresses me most about Nicholson Baker, I think, is the easy facility he has for going back and forth between fiction and nonfiction, sort of the way David Halberstam used to do one big work of cultural history, then treat himself to a change of pace with a book about sports. His latest here is a fun book, especially for those among us who are fascinated by the creative process. The ruminations are witty, as always, a delight to read, and the celebration it offers of poetry most welcome.

The voice is spot on here, vintage Baker. Selected Poems, a new selection edited by John N. New York, Alfred A. With this volume we go from a novel that considers the creation of poetry to an actual poet who not only excelled at the craft, but tried his level best to explain it to others. Serio, a noted scholar of the great American poet, Wallace Stevens Kudos to the publisher, Alfred A.

Knopf, for its commitment to publishing great poetry in beautiful, superbly edited editions. Philistines at the Gate By Nicholas Basbanes. You talk about adults who should know better making block-headed decisions. Talk about providing nourishment for the mind. We see this as a natural way to shape emerging trends and optimize technology. Coyle are voices that were summarily dismissed by Tracy and his administrative colleagues.

But hey, not to fret: Lucky for them they joined what became the Five College Consortium, which allowed the Hampshire undergraduates to borrow what they needed from Smith, Mount Holyoke, and Amherst Colleges, and the University of Massachusetts, something they did--and continue to do--in large numbers.

I wrote about this in A Splendor of Letters ; by that time, there was a real library--with real books--functioning on campus. But that, at least, was on the college level. I have to assume that youngsters applying for admission to Hampshire back then had to demonstrate a facility with books. You wonder what some admissions officer at Harvard, UCLA, Emory, or the University of Michigan--just about any accredited college or university out there, really--is going to think about an applicant from a secondary school that does not require its students to read books at all.

Make me another cappuccino, please--and stay tuned. Picturing the Unpictureable By Nicholas Basbanes. When you publish a book with a university press, the likelihood, far more often that not, is that you will generate a modicum of attention in your field of enquiry, and if you are lucky, earn the recognition you so richly deserve among your peers.

Very rarely--though there certainly are a number of remarkable exceptions--do you get the kind of traction in the mainstream media that will attract the attention you need to spark a flurry of sales and assure continued commentary. I know a little bit about this phenomenon, having recently written a centennial history of Yale University Press A World of Letters was published just a year ago next month , and taken the opportunity that project gave me to look into the overall practice of academic publishing itself.

What in the world of trade publishing we would call bestsellers, though infrequent, are by no means unknown among university press books.

2018 Debut Author Challenge Cover Wars - December Debuts

A few examples are instructive: The excision was made, according to Yale Press director John Donatich, after consultation with numerous national security experts, who felt that republication of the images could lead to a new wave of violence. Press coverage for a new book is always welcome, of course, but certainly not the kind of attention that has attended this decision.

The response has been mixed, though a good deal of it has accused Yale of caving in to outside pressure and throttling academic expression. He even gives a link for those interested in seeing the illustrations, though I note that Slate does not reproduce any of them either. I wonder why that might be? What she has written, in other words, and what was vetted, argued and defended through peer review for publication, is being published as is. While it does seem a bit odd that a book about illustrations should now contain no illustrations, I nevertheless have to say I sympathize, most reluctantly, with Donatich in his decision.

It is an extraordinarily special circumstance, not one that is likely to be repeated any time soon. These are crazy times, and since you are removing something that is not new to your pages in the first instance--these would be reprints of earlier published images, after all, and are readily available to anyone who wishes to find them online--and if this material has the potential to incite a truly nasty situation, then you have a responsibility to pause and do, I think, what you have to do. Going back to the lead of this entry, which deals with university press books and bestsellers, it is worth noting that Yale has moved the publication date of The Cartoons that Shook the World up from November to September.

Fantastic Foursome By Nicholas Basbanes. September is right around the corner, and the new books for fall are starting to trickle in from the publishers. Among those that have caught my fancy--and which, I believe, are richly deserving of your attention--are the following: The Sisters of Sinai: This meticulously researched effort takes what for decades has been an intriguing footnote in the history of textual serendipity, and gives it the full examination it so richly deserves. Janet Soskice, a professor in philosophical theology at Cambridge University, tells the story of Agnes and Margaret Smith, identical twin sisters from Scotland, and their discovery in at St.

The story of their spirited adventure on camelback to Mount Sinai where the ancient Greek Orthodox monastery is located makes for an exciting adventure, which Soskice accomplishes with style and aplomb. All in all, this is a welcome addition to the books-about-books bookshelf. Feel free, please, to use your imagination. That a compilation like this should come from such a distinguished publishing house as Oxford University Press gives me all the cover I need; that it should now be in its third revised edition, moreover, makes it all the more irresistible.

So what, you might ask, is there to learn from this compendium? That master wordsmith of all time, William Shakespeare, never used it--the word was decidedly vulgar, even then--though there are numerous allusions and puns in the canon that leave no doubt about what the old rascal had in mind. All in all, this is a scholarly work, though unquestionably with a light tough, and includes dozens of definitions presented in traditional OED style, with illustrative quotations drawn from myriad published sources.

This one, a later release, should not be lost in the deluge. Some excellent illustrations are included. Collected Stories , edited by Maureen Carroll. Every time I think I have exhausted my inventory of superlatives when it comes to the Library of America and what this essential publishing initiative means to our shared culture, a new release comes along that forces me to dig deeper and come up with another.

I admit, I am bragging a bit here--but I have every book issued in this series going back to when it started in , close to a of them, all kept together in their own book case. Talk about a sobering way to say good bye to summer and usher in the official arrival of fall. For a panel discussing conditions in the antiquarian book trade, speakers include the notable booksellers William Reese of New Haven, Conn.

A session probing the effect the economy has had on acquisitions policies among institutions will be moderated by Mark Dimunation, head of special collecetions at the Library of Congress ; featured panelists are Breon Mitchell of the Lilly Library at Indiana University, Kathleen Reagan of Cornell University , and Nadina Gardner, director of the Division of Preservation and Access for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Helfand, of the Grolier Club, moderating. A keynote address will be delivered in the morning by Cleveland bibliophile Robert Jackson; closing remarks will be made by Terry Belanger, recently retired as director of Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, which he founded in Note on the image above, which graces the Grolier Club announcement: Hats off to Andy Woodworth, a New Jersey librarian, for coming up with a splendid way of making people think about their libraries.

Needs a little work, I know, but there you have it. Many thanks, meanwhile, to super librarian Merrill Distad at the University of Alberta, for alerting me to this diverting news story. Continue reading Gooey Decimal System. Nothing is more entertaining than a visit to the home of a favorite author, especially when the house in question once belonged to the unrepentant bibliomaniac and pack rat Edward Gorey, who died nine years ago at 75, and left behind a veritable treasure trove of odds and ends.

His rambling, room cottage on 8 Strawberry Lane in Yarmouthport, Mass. Rick Jones, a Gorey friend who is now director and curator of the Edward Gorey House, told me that an interesting detail regarding the books is that their former owner wrote in every one when he read it, how long it took, and whether he read it again. With regard to the curiosities, Jones had this wonderful observation: Restored to what Hemingway intended when he agreed toward the end of his life to publish a truncated version of the notebooks he had kept while living abroad three decades earlier, and which had been rediscovered in by him, quite miraculously, in the bottom of a steamer trunk that he had left in storage at the Ritz Hotel in Paris and forgotten all about?

Hotchner, 89, a close friend of Hemingway over the final fourteen years of his life, and the author of Papa Hemingway , an affectionate biography published in Writing in an OpEd piece published this week in the New York Times, Hotchner pointedly recalls discussing the manuscript with Hemingway, and delivering it personally to Charles Scribner Jr. The compelling title, A Moveable Feast , was derived by Mary Hemingway from a beautiful sentence her husband had written which seemed to capture the spirit of the writings perfectly: And the reality of the matter is, there is some great material in the new edition--ten previously unpublished sketches--and it very definitely should appear between hard covers.

Lost in all this, of course, is the role of the publisher, Scribner. Ernest Hemingway has been a cash cow for the imprint for many decades, and what this squabble does more than anything else is to insure more sales; this reality is underscored by the announcement that both versions will remain available to a credulous public for purchase.

To this point, in particular, I defer to Hotchner, who has this to say about the matter: All publishers, Scribner included, are guardians of the books that authors entrust to them. I hope the Authors Guild is paying attention. Archimedes on the Beach By Nicholas Basbanes. In the week that has passed since my last posting, I have exhausted my supply of recreational reading, a circumstance that has occasioned a trip to Parnassas Books, one of my favorite haunts here on the Cape, located on Route 6A in Yarmouthport, now in its fiftieth year at the same location, with many thousands of volumes packed in a three-story building that dates to the s.

This time around, the find was not a particularly old book--even though the stock-in-trade at Parnassus is overwhelmingly second-hand books, with a respectable inventory of antiquarian items and a tastefully-chosen selection of new-releases mixed in--but a work I confess I totally missed when it was released two years ago, and am thrilled--dare I say relieved? How I missed The Archimedes Codex: But there it was, on a shelf, at a very good price, and all I can say is better late than never. Perhaps a little back-story is in order here.

Norman, a San Francisco psychoanalyst who had put together what was renowned to be the outstanding collection of medical and science books assembled by anyone in the twentieth century. In his interview with me, Dr. Halfway through the bidding for the lots, a time-out, in essence, was called, so that another mini-auction could proceed in and of itself. What was about to go on the block--and a battery of television cameras was set up in the back of the Park Avenue gallery to record it all--was a dingy, dreary-looking little volume that had come to be known as the Archimedes Codex.

On the surface, the book is a medieval manuscript prepared in the thirteenth century for liturgical use in the form of a palimpsest, which once-upon-a-time was a standard method for recycling leaves of parchment by scraping away unwanted writings, and inking them over with a new text. What made this palimpsest especially noteworthy was that it contained the earliest known writings of Archimedes B.

Their efforts--fully supported and underwritten by the new owner, coyly referred to as Mr. The manuscript also contained some lost speeches by Hyperides, a noted orator of ancient times. Addressing complaints from some quarters that such an important manuscript had not found a permanent home in an institution, Noel offers this: But if Archimedes had meant enough to the public, then public institutions would have bought it.

Public institutions were offered the book at a lower price than it actually fetched at auction, and they turned it down. If you think that is a shame, then it is a shame that we all share. We live in a world where value translates into cash. If you care about what happens to world heritage, get political about it, and be prepared to pay for it.

This is a great read, and since January, available in a new paperback edition. I have ten books that I brough along with me, a few of them newly released, and which I will share herewith as worthy of your attention. I think also I will take this opportunity to express my idea of what constitutes summer reading, since we are very definitely in that mode. I also have a book in hand that I am reviewing for the Los Angeles Times, the title of which I will keep to myself until the piece is filed and published. I can say, in any case, that it is work-related--it is a book about books--and that I am enjoying it enormously.

As for summer reading? But then again, I always like such a balance, regardless of what time of year it may be. And while each of the books that follow happens to be published by a university press, do not for a second assume by the titles or the subject matter that they are in any way inaccessible or overly arcane.

Each one is impressively researched, thoughtfully conceived, and very well written. Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of education and history at New York University, has culled a rich range of sources, oral histories, poetry, music, and movies among them, to trace the evolution of this mainstay in the American past. How important was the little red schoolhouse? The land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers we know today as Iraq has been witness to more than seven thousand years of civilization that have been recorded in some fashion or another over that remarkable span, an extraordinary continuum of human history that is unmatched by any region of the world.

Known as Iraq only since the time of the Muslim conquest of AD, the area collectively referred to by scholars of ancient history as Mesopotamia--the land between the rivers--has been home variously to Sumerians, Babylonians, Amorites, Akkadians, Assyrians, Hitties, Kattities, and Sassanians, ruled by legendary leaders such as Hammurabi and Ashurbanipal. Here too are found pioneering achievements in pyrotechnology, as well as important innovations in art and architecture.

Here is a book about books that is filled with fascinating, scrupulously gathered information. Grimoires, we learn--and the word is new to me--are books of conjurations and charms. Here, he takes us from ancient Egypt through Kabbalah, medieval sorcery, the post-war Germanic occult phenomenon, up to and including charm books made and distributed in the United States. Among banned books, grimoires rank right up there with the most feared writings through history. Davies includes numerous illustrations; a really fine effort that will be of considerable interest to bibliophiles and collectors alike.

I have to say that I really was excited about this book when I saw it announced in the Johns Hopkins spring catalog, and my keen anticipation has been rewarded. First of all, I love stuff like his, and second of all, I am writing a cultural history of paper and papermaking, and here, between the hard covers of one book, is a meticulously researched monograph about the very first application of computer science on a widespread, systemic level, and all of it relied on paper. Early punched cards helped to compile the U. When Franklin Roosevelt introduced Social Security in , twenty-one million Americans were eligible for old-age pensions that were calculated and processed on massive punched-card registers.

Vichy France used similar technologies in its attempt to mobilize against the Nazi threat, while the Germans developed their own procedures to assist in their war effort. The University of Virginia announced last week the appointment of Michael F. A former Marshall scholar and a published poet to boot, Suarez, 49, currently holds a joint appointment as a professor of English at Fordham University and as Fellow and Tutor in English at Campion Hall, Oxford University.

He has written extensively on book history check his credits out here , and is a perfect choice to lead RBS into its second quarter-century. Bravo to the search committee for sifting through what had to be a daunting short list of worthy prospects for this important position, and for coming up with such an inspired choice. Suarez will assume his new duties in September, and, like Belanger, will hold the position of University Professor, a senior rank that allows its holders wide latitude to both teach and conduct research. Though he is retiring from active leadership of Rare Book School, Belanger, a MacArthur Fellow, remains one of the legitimate giants of the book world, and is certain to remain active in many productive ways.

While his physical presence will surely be missed in Charlottesville, he is turning over a brilliantly conceived operation that has top people in place, and a mandate of purpose clearly defined for his successor. Rare Book School is an experience I hope every serious book person is able to experience at least once in a lifetime; I took my first course three two years ago--a History of Paper section taught jointly by Tim Barrett and John Bidwell--and look forward to going back at some point in the near future when time allows.

Those interested in learning more, should definitely check out the variety of courses taught , and the caliber of the people who teach them. All in all, an indispensable institution. A concept I find absolutely fascinating is the social history of books--learning something about through whose hands a volume may have passed, and the various lives it has touched--not just the details of its content, scarcity, or rarity, as the case may be, but its travels as an artifact. A perfect example of this phenomenon emerged in an email I got last week from John D.

I liked it so much, in fact, I asked if he minded my sharing it with my readers here. This is what a blog is all about, right? Grant who married a Russian prince [her married name was Princess Julia Cantacuzene ] and lived in St. Petersburg until after the Revolution. I did, and their head curator, Nancy Kuhl, responded that they would be very pleased to have the book. I mailed the book to them late last week. I just wish there had been some indication of who the recipient of the book was, but there was no name or address in the book at all.

Cofield, by the way, teaches social studies in a Georgia High School, and is obviously a great believer in the power that books have to stir the world. Many thanks to him for passing this along. Spring Cleaning By Nicholas Basbanes. Space of course is the principal consideration, but you also reach a certain point in life where you begin to think of collecting books not just in terms of addition, but of subtraction as well. Everyone of a certain age knows whereof I speak. How all of this morphed its way into a weeding frenzy was basically a circumstance of one thing leading to another.

All of the inscribed books, you see, have not been kept in one place, but in thematic categories instead. Doctorow among novelists--you get the idea. Once I got immersed in this--and I spent a full week at the task--I seized the opportunity to do some grooming. All told, I found about a hundred books that will now make their way up to Clark University for an annual sale put on to benefit the Friends of the Goddard Library, an event I have enjoyed supporting for the better part of twenty-five years.

I will miss some of them, to be sure--they have been worthy companions over many years--but I am pleased to know they will find new lives among kindred spirits. As for the odyssey through the inscribed books, this was a romp unique to my experience. Since each book contains a personal message of one sort or another, reading all of them individually allowed me to relive the circumstances of every interview, and to recall how pleasant it was to spend time with some of the people I admire most in the world--which is book people.

Baltimore Bibliophiles By Nicholas Basbanes. Edited by Donald Farren and August A. In a testimonial to her effort, Leonard S. On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the group in , the founding members recalled in a commemorative booklet the circumstances of their getting together. Inspired Marketing By Nicholas Basbanes. Normally, the whole idea of a printed book is that it involves an element of permanence, not something as patently disposable as bathroom tissue, but the theme of this work, apparently, is what suggested the unusual format.

Given that Japanese characters do not read from left to right, or right to left, but up and down, the format of an unfolding scroll, as it were, seemed ideally suited to presenting the tale, especially on a medium that is somewhat suggestive of the content itself, and was certain to get some free advance publicity. Suzuki is no flash in the pan, I might add. Just last week I got some samples of hand-made paper made in Tasmania from the dung of kangaroos and wombats by a firm known as Creative Paper Tasmania.

I had been alerted by one of my daughters to a piece on NPR about the unusual process, and got in touch with the papermaker, Darren Simpson. We had a great chat by telephone, my favorite quote coming in response to the most basic question I put to him Why, I had asked, this particular fiber source, which is abundant on this large island off the coast of Australia. Learn something new every day. On a gorgeous spring morning when I would much rather be writing about a delightful trip to Southern California to give the Samuel Lazerow Lecture at UCLA--a whirlwind visit to the West Coast that included some productive time in the library of the Getty Research Institute- -I find myself gazing north of Los Angeles to that magical City by the Bay, and thinking about a plan that is afoot to cherry pick treasures from the Gleason Library of the University of San Francisco, and sell them off for hard cash.

I write about this now, because there is time to mobilize a response. Many of you, I am sure, have heard about the sleazy attempt reported in January by Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. Apparently taking a cue from this sort of cultural myopia, the president of the University of San Francisco, the Rev. This report, needless to say, has occasioned a flurry of comments on the ExLibris site ; those interested in learning more should take a look, and follow the thread, which takes in the whole phenomenon of institutions finding every excuse imaginable to sell off cultural treasures entrusted to their care, including discussion of another fire sale going on now at the Wilmington Free Library in Delaware for purposes of fixing a leaky roof and installing new air conditioning.

But the USF situation, I have to say, is the one that rankles me the most. He should be reminded that this material was solicited and given to USF with the explicit expectation that the university would be a worthy custodian--and we can be sure that it was accepted by this noble Jesuit institution on those very terms. If you have thoughts on this matter, and would like to express them, you can write USF President Stephen Privett at privett usfca.

Postcards at the Met By Nicholas Basbanes. Though I have always been a reader, I did not become a serious collector of books until I was in my mids. My earliest pursuits as a child were rocks, an interest I have retained to this day, especially while walking on beaches, and postcards, which I kept under my bed in a tattered old valise I had rescued from the trash. I began to gather these fabulous little curiosities around the age of seven or eight, and kept at it well into my teens, when other interests began to kick in. I undoubtedly had this childhood fascination for postcards in mind back in when I bought, at a small auction put on by the Friends of the Goddard Library at Clark University, in Worcester, Mass.

Walker Evans , of course, was one of the great photographers of his time, acclaimed by some as the poet laureate of the medium in America. Evans also collected such things as printed ephemera, driftwood, tin-can pull tabs and metal and tin wood signs that he photographed in situ, and then removed from their moorings.

Altogether my kind of guy. Not content to merely collect postcards--which covered a vast range of subjects, from the purely pictorial to the nutty and the whimsical--Evans researched their history, and wrote about them as a cultural phenomenon distinctive of their time. A terrific book--and a terrific exhibition; by all means take it in if you find yourself in New York over the next couple of weeks.

Nothing worthwhile ever happens in a vacuum.

Writers are inspired to soldier along and spend years on dreams and ideas that they hope ultimately will find their way between hard covers, and then cross their fingers, waiting for the response. Using the stories related in EBIR as a model, Hoskinson had invited submission of thousand-word essays centered on a basic premise: The names of all the participants, and their books, are posted on the project website , along with links to the texts of their essays, which I hope you all take some time to check out.

A very special day, all around--one made all the more memorable by an evening a few of us spent the night before at Progressive Field for a Red Sox-Indians game won in the 10th inning by Boston on a Jonathan Van Every home run. Between innings, however, and on travel days for the others, there remains plenty of down time to dip into some really good books. Empires of the Silk Road: A region often overlooked in the grand continuum of world history--a huge, landlocked part of the world between Europe and Asia that has been home to such empires as those of Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan and the Mongols, Tamerlane and the Timurads, the Anatolians, the Tibetans, and the Scythians--is given its just due in this majestic work that spans a sweep of five thousand years, from the Bronze Age to the present.

In the process, Christopher Beckwith, a professor of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University, tackles a number of misconceptions, not least among them that the peoples of an international trading network in Central Eurasia known collectively as the Silk Road were primarily nomadic, warfaring, barbarous and generally slothful groups. Indeed, he argues that for several critical centuries in the development of global civilization--and despite incursions by Persians, Greeks, Arabs, and Chinese, among others--Central Eurasia led the world in science, economics, and the arts.

In the process of illuminating this essential piece of the human past, Beckwick constructs a scrupulously researched narrative that is wholly accessible, and demands close attention. Prior to these books, what people knew about the mechanics of sexual relationships came from text books. Their first-hand reports of human sexuality, reported clinically in their books--Masters and Johnson observed 10, sexual acts in pursuit of their data--changed the entire paradigm. Thomas Maier--the biographer previously of another inhabitant of this exclusive group of attitude-changing authors, the baby doctor Dr.

Benjamin Spock--has written a compelling profile of the two pioneers that concentrates on their own relationship and working patterns. Altogether a fascinating book. This effort--which is being released to coincide with a PBS series that will air on three successive Wednesdays beginning May draws on the testimony of more than a hundred witnesses to the events which had been kept secret for decades, only available recently since the opening of the archives of the former Soviet Union.

Though not likely to alter prevailing evaluations of the war, the book does offer fresh insights on the relationship between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill. Last--but not by any means least--we have this thoroughly engaging compendium of literary arcania and plenty of significa as well to salute. This is a really fun book, and smartly written to boot. Bullish on Libraries By Nicholas Basbanes. Especially heartening in both instances is the fact that each institution has made clear an unequivocal belief that books as we know them still matter a great deal, and that the library remains the center and soul of their universities.

Fully accessible to the 25, enrolled students, the library also serves the general public, giving the taxpayers a mighty bang for their buck. An attractive building located at the virtual crossroads of the campus, the Morris Library has been newly fitted with common rooms that make it particularly inviting as a gathering place; there is a coffee and food gallery, of course, but also eleven nicely appointed group study areas that are ideal for reading and contemplation.

Carbondale is in the extreme southern section of the state, just 96 miles from St. Louis, miles from Chicago. To be expected, special collections are strong in the history of the Middle Mississippi Valley, but there are outstanding holdings too in American philosophy, twentieth-century world literature, British and American expatriate writers of the s, the Irish Literary Renaissance, and freedom of the press and censorship issues.

I found three books from their stock of 50, volumes that added to the weight of my suitcase, and thank them for the terrific job they did to make for such a successful signing following my public talk.

Each volume is bound in lovely marbled paper boards with calf-skin spines, and all are in remarkably fine condition. There is no foxing to speak of, no loose hinges, no missing plates, all of the steel engravings are present, with original tissues in place. In the meantime, I did due diligence on the title, running a quick ABE search , and coming up with a number of dealer quotes and descriptions for individual volumes, finding only one for the entire set, which leads me to believe this is an item of some scarcity.

Well, it was in this closet where my wife, who was participating in the frenetic search, located the box with the manuscript, underneath which was another box, containing some books. Why I put them away back then in the closet remains a mystery to me, but there they were--and I am thrilled to welcome them back into the fold. Score another one for Zack Jenks.

Anything, indeed, can be anywhere. A couple of trips to South Carolina, Texas, and Maine have given me the opportunity to read a number of fun novels while traveling, which I will write about, I promise, in an upcoming entry, but first these worthwhile works of nonfiction, all recent releases, and each deserving of your attention. Emerson on the Creative Process, by Robert D. Richardson is one of the outstanding literary biographers at work today. This taut, beautifully written monograph explores the relationship between the voracious reading habits of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the thoughtful sessions of writing that followed.

He draws the title from an essay Emerson wrote in The American Scholar. He saw himself, needless to say, as a Golconda. Before there was a blogosphere to serve as a gathering place for multiple thoughts and commentary, there was the Op-Ed Page, introduced by the New York Times in , and now a staple in newspapers everywhere. This splendidly produced, over-sized effort--and it could comfortably grace the most discriminating of coffee tables--reproduces many of the works that never got onto the streets; Kraus explains that she was able to print these pictures because they are not the property of the Times, but the artists who drew them.

Her history of the page, and its contributors, is must reading for those of us who begin each day with the Times immediately at hand. Rarely do we think of the earliest printed works in the Americas being mathematical texts, since most scholarly works for use in the Colonies were imported from Europe, though quite a body of interesting titles, it turns out, were produced in Mexico, Peru, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York, among other places. This learned work, ostensibly an annotated bibliography, offers a number of surprises that students and collectors of mathematical books and books of science will find particularly useful.

To give you an idea of just how scarce this edition is, it is the only perfect copy held in any North American library, making it more scarce, in fact, than the Gutenberg Bible, with copies in twelve American institutions. Libraries require a lot of elements to achieve greatness, not least among them administrators with foresight and librarians with vision, but never, to my knowledge, have they been able to accomplish anything of substance without the help of their friends--excuse me, their Friends--and that applies at every level of participation.

Those with modest means--but eager all the same to help preserve our literary patrimony--can participate in other ways, such as the Adopt-a-Book program sponsored by the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Mass. But there is also something wonderfully complex in the Maine character, I think, that savors a good story, and maintains an enduring respect for things in print.

Read, write or drink a lot. In really tough winters, sometimes we go for all three. Browsing was pretty much the order of the day for me, though I was nonetheless impressed by the numbers and the variety of the offerings. The place was bustling when we stopped by Saturday afternoon, so there was little time to chat at length with owners Annegret and Mike Cukierski, who opened this splendid curiosity twenty-three years ago, and have every intention of keeping it going, what with son Chad now fully involved in the operations. It is easily the longest book gallery I have ever seen--a football field, one end to the other, and a fabulous chicken sign out front.

I especially enjoyed schmoozing with owner Vicki Landman, a former county librarian in Maryland, now a full time books and antiques seller in her native state. I told her of my interests in the Maine paper industry, and she suggested a number of titles that might be useful, and gave me the names of some people to contact for more information. Any booking odyssey to Maine has to include a stop here--with ample time set aside for serious examination of each and every one of the fourteen rooms.

Founder Doug Harding has been in the business here since , and is a widely respected professional in the trade. For those who need a navigational fix, Wells is 48 miles south of Freeport, home of L. There are many splendid places to stop for lobster in between. Finally, if I may, how about a picture of yours truly in Acadia National Park, courtesy of CVB, to prove that one does not live entirely by books alone at least not all the time: The most recent case in Europe involves a year-old Iranian businessman, Farhad Hakimzadeh, who was sentenced to two years in prison in January for having removed pages from rare books in the British and Bodleian libraries over a seven-year period.

One of the books he vandalized contained a year-old map painted by Hans Holbein, an artist in the court of Henry VIII, and valued at 32, pounds. The two earlier cases discussed in the article involve the thefts in France of Stanislas Gosse, a year-old former naval officer whose particular passion was for illuminated manuscripts plundered from the library of a monastery in eastern France, and the five-year feeding frenzy of one William Jacques, also known as Mr.

Let me note that there is a very good reason for why it is pretty difficult to go into the reading rooms of special collections libraries in much of the world these days. Bags and coats must be left outside, surveillance cameras are operating, and people are being watched. His toll over a twenty-year spree: I shall remember always the words of W. Dennis Aiken, the FBI special agent who supervised the investigation of the case: He did nighttime burglaries.

He defeated sophisticated alarm systems. He threw books out windows. He knew what was going on in the life of libraries, and he picked their weakest moments. This is a very clever man. Book theft was his life. A Jury of Her Peers: British Women Novelists from From Bronte to Lessing Princeton University Press, , a standard work, now offers a penetrating history of American women writers in America, as the subtitle states, from the early seventeenth century, up to the present moment a nice touch, that--Anne to Annie. This copiously illustrated overview of lighter than air aviation chronicles an adventurous period in human accomplishment with style and insight, focusing on the earliest attempts to take flight by way of inflated envelopes, with two French paper-makers, the brothers Jacques-Etienne and Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, leading the way in the s.

Babylon , edited by I. Located on the banks of the Euphrates River in what is now war-torn Iraq, what remains of the vanished city today are mostly dim memories and second-hand accounts passed on by such historians as Herodotus and Ctesias, and, of course, a range of exquisite artifacts that have been recovered over the years and removed to a number of great museums. Like no other city, its history has become bound up with legend. Bruccoli , who died last year at Matt was a lot of things--scholar, writer, teacher, editor, publisher, consummate collector of F.

Continue reading A Romp in the Vault. The items listed represent the creme de la creme of a 15,volume collection of modern first editions gathered over many years by Bruce Kahn, a Michigan lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions; other books in the collection will be offered in later catalogs. Signed by the author. Numerous entries in this new catalog bear that out, with comprehensive, detailed descriptions that are little essays in their own right.

According to the catalog entry, almost all images of the Wild West Show are to be found in lithographic posters and photographs. Happily, I have the catalog in hand to enjoy. Booking the Cape By Nicholas Basbanes. Continue reading Booking the Cape. Regardless of how stressed the economy may be at any given time, truly great books and manuscripts will always find a new home, and rarely will they be at fire-sale prices.

Sullenberger III and the crew of U. But I would be remiss if I failed to point out that Feb. Two I heartily recommend: Ron Ravneberg By Nicholas Basbanes. The community of bibliophiles lost a wonderful friend over the weekend with the passing in Columbus, Ohio, of Ronald L. See his obituary in the Columbus Dispatch. Ron was a great champion of books and of promoting contact and communication among book people everywhere.

I first met Ron in when he invited the book artist and bookmaker Barry Moser and myself out to Columbus to participate in the Celebration of the Book, organized by Aldus and held in July of that year at Ohio State University. It was a most memorable event. Continue reading Ron Ravneberg.

John Updike By Nicholas Basbanes. It was twenty-five years ago this month, almost to the day, that I heard John Updike give a talk about books and reading that resonates with me as if he had delivered it yesterday. Richard Yates By Nicholas Basbanes. Richard Yates, photo by Thomas Victor. Presidential Bookshelf By Nicholas Basbanes. Much has been made over the past couple of weeks on the matter of two presidents--one being sworn in tomorrow, the other heading back to Texas after eight years in the Oval Office--and what they have read, or what at the very least they are said by others to have read.

Barack Obama arrived in Bozeman, Mont. Reading on the Rise By Nicholas Basbanes. Aptly titled Reading on the Rise-- the last report in was called Reading at Risk --the new survey shows the most dramatic improvement among young adults aged , with a 9 percent spike over the previous period. All in all, this is a great report for Dana Gioia, the outgoing chairman of the NEA, whose Big Read initiative has brought reading programs to millions of people throughout America.

Early into the thread, one contributor mentioned my book, A Gentle Madness, and the profile I wrote of Walter Pforzheimer, an extraordinary bookman and lifelong Central Intelligence Agency officer who died in at 88 see New York Times obit , or far better yet, read my take on him in AGM, pp. Without getting too specific here--those who are interested in the various arguments being put forth should check them out on the ex libris site--I would like to address briefly a question that has been raised regarding the propriety of Pforzheimer having taken a few books from the chancellery, and his justification for doing so.

I went back to the tape I made of the interview, and Pforzheimer is pretty clear in what he said to me. As a condition of granting me the interview, I might add that he insisted on seeing what I wrote about him before publication, something I very rarely agree to do, but did so in this instance, given the highly sensitive nature of our discussion--and because I really wanted to talk to him about his collecting.

Pforzheimer told me that each of the books he took were not works of any apparent rarity, that all bore the personal bookplate of Hitler, and that most contained a personal inscription to Hitler from the authors--meaning that they were not the property of the defeated and by then defunct Nazi government, but the private property of the deceased former dictator, a subtle yet significant point, I think, in this context. Penn By Nicholas Basbanes. In , Miss Steloff sold the store, by then a literary salon in the grand tradition, to Andreas Brown, a bookseller, like herself, with a deep passion for authors and literature, but she very much remained a presence until her death in at the age of I became a regular parishioner in , the year I started making the first of many annual trips to New York for meetings of the National Book Critics Circle and to attend awards ceremonies of the National Book Awards.

My hotel of choice in those days, of course--where else? Before long I developed a nodding acquaintance with Miss Steelof, who was always seated on a stool behind the counter. I also became a pal of the famous Algonquin Cat , an urban feline who patrolled the lobby of the hotel with as much elan as the many celebrity writers who held court in the cozy bar, but that, as they say, is another story. Among the treasures en route to Philadelphia, beginning this week, are items from the personal libraries of Anais Nin and Truman Capote, but most exciting of all are the surprises that will reveal themselves as the boxes are opened, cataloged, and made available to new generations of students and readers.

David McKnight, director of the library, agreed. Our doors are open. I can only imagine what sets of the uncorrected proofs will be going for shortly on eBay. For those who wonder how Berkley might have gone about investigating the various claims made by Rosenblat in his manuscript, I suggest they take a look at the outstanding piece of hard-nosed journalism researched and written by Gabriel Sherman for the most recent edition of The New Republic, published on Christmas Day.

There is one bit bit of irony here, and it comes in the announcement by Hollywood film producer Harris Salomon that he will proceed with plans for a movie based on the book, with the caveat that it now will be pitched to a credulous public as a work of the imagination, not nonfiction. Harold Pinter By Nicholas Basbanes. The death yesterday at 78 of Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter brings to mind a very brief discussion I had with the great British playwright twenty-four years ago, and how I acquired what is easily one of the most unusual author autographs in my collection of inscribed first editions.

The occasion for our meeting was the publication of her book, The Weaker Vessel , a richly informative study of women in seventeenth-century England. Do you mind terribly if I take my wife to the museum? But I did wonder aloud if she could inscribe my copy of her book before they left, and opportunist that I am in these matters, asked Pinter if he could sign it as well. The Times is famous for writing obituaries of notable people well in advance of their deaths, then keeping the articles on file and updating them only with the particulars of their passing.

An homage of sorts today to the great Finley Peter Dunne , the inimitable Chicago newspaperman whose syndicated column of a century ago was a national sensation, earning the unqualified endorsement of such fans as Teddy Roosevelt, despite the fact that TR was a frequent target of his barbed wit. What captured the fancy of readers everywhere was the spontaneity and infectious good nature of Mr.

Dooley, and the fact that his sardonic words of wisdom were expressed in the barely penetrable voice of a thick Irish brogue. Dunne wrote some Dooley pieces, a good many of them collected in eight volumes published between Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War and Mr. Dooley on Making a Will and Other Necessary Evils , all runaway best-sellers of their day in a manner that prefigured the enormous popularity of the great newspaper humorist Art Buchwald, who died last year at Because the Dooley collections are all in the public domain, full texts for most are available online through Google Books or Project Gutenberg.

In each instance, just do a search for Finley Peter Dunne, and follow the directions. Alternatively, you might want to borrow a real copy from the public library, in which case I suggest you go to WorldCat , the online database for materials held in thousands of libraries worldwide. Find the item you are looking for by author, title, keyword, or a combination, plug in your zip code, and the nearest copy near you will be displayed. This is one of the most remarkable tools available online to readers everywhere, and it is absolutely free.

I regard it as indispensable to what I do. T he Monitor occasionally reprints book reviews from its archives. This review originally ran on Dec. To see it again like this--indeed, to run across it in a fashion that recalls the words of Mr. Dooley--makes for an unforgettable Christmas gift. But what has sparked my thoughts today of the deft pen of Halberstam is another piece that ran in the Times , and brought to my attention this morning by my wife Connie who had the newspaper first. Through the magic of Google, I found the essay quite quickly, on the web page of the society itself, in fact.

Like the institution Halberstam celebrated, the article has lost none of its magic with the passage of eleven years, and I recommend it as a heartfelt profile of a great book place. You can read it here: Today, we have redux of another kind, and not one that is very pleasant to report. Not content, apparently, to keep at least a couple of the treasures that remained from a tradition that goes back to , MassHort found another 27 high-end items on its shelves to put on the block--all of them beautifully illustrated, and all of them prime targets for the kind of cultural cannibalism that took place with the Nurnbergische hesperides -- were offered up on Dec.

Top grossers among MassHort books included: But she added this caveat: The founders and earliest benefactors of this venerable institution--some of the giants of nineteenth-century Boston society--must be turning over in their graves. The Athens of America, indeed. The Adventures of an Impecunious Collector , written by a man named Paul Jourdan-Smith, and published in , during the midst of the Great Depression. Here is what he had to say: He may have to quit his house, abandon his trip to Europe and give away his car; but his books are patiently waiting to yield their comfort and provoke him to mirth.

They will tell him that banks and civilizations have smashed before; governments have been on the rocks, and men have been fools in all ages. But it is all very funny. The gods laugh to see such sport, and why should we not join them? Luxury Publishing By Nicholas Basbanes. I am by no means opposed to this convention--indeed, I have written admiringly on occasion about people who make these books as well as those who covet, sell and collect them--but I have always been fairly straightforward in my belief that the fundamental purpose of a book is to inspire, instruct, and entertain, and that this, typically, is done through the medium of the written word.

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